Memory plays tricks

Dear Friend

I hope you're well. I've stumbled upon a study that caught my attention, and I couldn't help but share it with you. It's about the curious quirks of our short-term memory, and how it bends to our expectations.

In the study, they did four experiments, where people were shown a mix of real letters and some funny mirrored ones. A few seconds later, they had to remember what they saw. Turns out, they got it wrong quite often, but they were pretty sure they were right. Now, the interesting bit is that people mostly messed up the mirrored letters, thinking they were real. It wasn't just because they looked alike, but because they expected them to be real letters. So, our memories played tricks on us, just like that.

This study supports the idea that maybe our memories aren't just what we see, but also what we expect to see. And that goes for even the things we saw just moments ago, meaning that our prior expectations can shape our memory traces. In essence, even our short-term memory may not always be an accurate representation of what we've just perceived.

After I read that study, I couldn't help but dive deeper into the world of false memories. I stumbled upon a few more intriguing pieces of research that shed light on the quirks of our memory.

First, I read about the "Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm," a classic experiment in which people are presented with a list of words and later recall a related but non-presented word. This study, conducted by Henry Roediger and Kathleen McDermott, illustrates how our minds can create false memories based on associations.

One study I found delved into the power of words and how they can shape our recollection of events. Elizabeth Loftus and John Palmer discovered that simply changing the description of a car crash from "smashing" to "hitting" could alter a person's memory of the accident's severity.

Charles Brainerd and Valerie Reyna volume "The Science of False Memory" brings together a bunch of papers focusing on the role of emotion in creating false memories. They showed that emotional events could make false memories more likely to form, and that people were more certain of these emotional false memories.

Finally, I came across a study by Aileen Oeberst and Hartmut Blank, who highlighted the power of social influences on memory. They showed that people could be persuaded to adopt entirely false memories if their peers supported the fabrication, and, this is fascinating, and that suggestive influence can be completely undone, through an enlightenment procedure.

Now, with all these studies in mind, it got me thinking. I wondered if there's a way we could have that AI everyone's talking about to help us recall things better, like a trusty sidekick to set the record straight?

Imagine having an AI by your side, one that could help you remember the true facts of a situation instead of letting those pesky false memories take hold. We'd be able to avoid those embarrassing moments when we mix up the details or forget something important altogether.

There's something quite noble about this idea, too. AI could help witnesses in court remember things more accurately, leading to fairer trials and fewer wrongful convictions. But it doesn't stop there, friend. In our personal relationships, having a clearer memory might help us avoid misunderstandings and mend fences. And as for mental health, it could be a blessing for those grappling with their past, making it easier to come to terms with reality.

So I looked into the topic and there isn't much out there, yet. I read an interview with Julia Shaw, a false memory expert, in which she says that "artificial intelligence (AI) might be able to help with this." She created a startup that uses AI to record help employees record better evidence of inappropriate behaviour (https://talktospot.com).

Many papers discuss the dark side of AI, how it could erase our memories or sneak false ones into our minds. These writings caution us about the risks we face in our quest for progress, with privacy and even identity being precious things we might lose along the way.

For now, we'll leave this subject be, but it's worth returning to someday. In the meantime, I suggest you take a look at a captivating talk by Prof. Dr. Shannon Vallor titled "The AI Mirror: Reclaiming our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking" here https://lecture2go.uni-hamburg.de/l2go/-/get/v/62832.

Till our paths cross again, my friend, I trust these musings will intrigue you as much as they do me.

Yours sincerely,

L.

P.S. In case you're curious, here are the references for the studies I mentioned earlier.

• Soro, E., Barbotto, S., Gramigna, R., Santangelo, A. D., Voto, C., & Leone, M. (2021, May 20). AI for facial autobiographical memory recovering and transmission. Communication, technologies et développement. https://doi.org/10.4000/ctd.6113
• Brainerd, C. J., & Reyna, V. F. (2005). The Science of False Memory. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195154054.001.0001
• Loftus, E. F., & Palmer, J. C. (1974). Reconstruction of automobile destruction: An example of the interaction between language and memory. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 13(5), 585-589. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-5371(74)80011-3
• Loftus, E. F. (2005). Planting misinformation in the human mind: A 30-year investigation of the malleability of memory. Learning & Memory, 12(4), 361-366. https://doi.org/10.1101/lm.94705
• Oeberst, A., & Blank, H. (2012). Undoing suggestive influence on memory: The reversibility of the eyewitness misinformation effect. Cognition, 125(2), 141-159. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2012.07.009
• Roediger, H. L., & McDermott, K. B. (1995). Creating false memories: Remembering words not presented in lists. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 21(4), 803-814. https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.21.4.803